I've been playing music for over 20 years now. I started playing when I was 14 years old. To everyone who has said I was an overnight success... where have you been the last 20 years?

It should be if you're a good singer and a good songwriter, you should have your spot. You get everybody trying to release the prettiest guy, but that doesn't mean they're the best artist. Most of the time the true artists are just normal old dudes.

My little boy, West, and my wife, they're my rock and that's the thing that keeps driving me to do better at what I do professionally. There was a time in my career where I had been on this huge roller coaster ride and I'd really got in the spot where I could've hung up it and just been a songwriter.

One of the most important times in my life was the first time that I remember seeing my daddy get onstage and play music with a bunch of guys. All of them playing something different at the same time and all becoming one, and me soaking that in at 5 years old and going, 'That's my daddy up there, and he's a part of something.'

One thing I've had to realize in my career is that I can't do it all. Sometimes we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to make sure we're writing the next hit. There are other people out there, and that's what they do every day, and they have strengths that I don't have.

One thing we have to remember as songwriters is that we have to consider that country music is the country's music. That doesn't mean that everybody's rural.

The first single I released, 'Anything Goes,' is probably one of the best-written songs I've heard in a long time. It takes somebody knowing who you are. Sometimes writers know who an artist is and what they want to say and how they sing. I will never be opposed to cutting a song if somebody nails my life and what I'm going through.

There is a big difference between No. 1 and No. 2. I don't care who wrote it. I'd love to one day have a No. 1 that I wrote, but if that ain't in the cards, whatever. My job is right now is to make the best music I can and try to get it to the people, whether it be something that I wrote or not. It's my job to be the best I can for the fans.

There's certain things as a songwriter that I don't really care to write about, and there are certain things I won't sing about anymore. There are just so many things that I probably thought was OK for me, or have been in the past, that I would never want my son to think was OK.

When I first met my wife, I really just settled down quite a bit and I started living a much cleaner lifestyle. I was able to concentrate on things that I neglected in the past a little more and I was spending a lot more time at home than I normally would.

When you listen to radio and hear the same 20 or 25 songs, you start hunting down your CD's. Waylon Jennings' records were always around to listen to.

When you're listening to radio and hear the same 20 songs over and over and over, you want a break from it. Sometimes you don't want to hear something that sounds just like everything else on the radio. Eventually, if you hear the same sounds and the same musicians and the same mixes and all of that, it will start to sound like elevator music.

I firmly believe that every six years, a person goes through a serious change. Think about it: At 6, you start school. At about 12, you start hitting puberty. And then it goes on. You start hitting these different mental levels, and people change. I think that's part of the reason the divorce rate is so high.

That time, when everyone else is asleep, and it's just me and my little man, that's the best time I've ever spent in my life. I just get to love on him. It, literally, is the best.

I always try to put something personal on my albums just to give people out there a little piece of my history and how I got where I am and who I am.

I feel like a younger man, and I'm sure having a child and all that has to do with that.

I find it hard to talk and say things, but I can always sing about them.

I love Darius Rucker. He's a true artist, a great songwriter who can play his instrument, sing and write about his life.

I never felt like I wanted to have kids until I could be home and be a daddy, and those are the things that I didn't have.

I really tend to write in retrospect.